The Subject

The Subject


                                The Subject
| 10 min
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Hidden away in his workshop, an animator leans over what appears to be a human body and begins to perform an autopsy. Who is this lifeless being stretched out before him? As he dissects the plasteline figure, the spirit of scientific inquiry gives way to the madness of artistic inspiration, and the animator’s tools go to work. Slicing into the skin, separating the tissues, probing the entrails, the artist lets loose his creative imagination as entire worlds take shape before his eyes, sweeping him into the enormity of the inner spaces to be explored. What will he find there? What does an animator stand to discover through an autopsy of a body he himself created? In this story-within-a-story about the art of creation, director Patrick Bouchard pays homage to the animator’s vocation—namely, breathing life into the inanimate. The Subject takes us to the conceptual limits of animation, examining the connections between life and death, body and psyche, individual and community, real and imaginary, as it delves into the invisible worlds within.

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The Subject, Patrick Bouchard, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

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Credits
  • writer
    Patrick Bouchard
  • animator
    Patrick Bouchard
  • director
    Patrick Bouchard
  • producer
    Julie Roy
  • sets
    Dany Boivin
  • props
    Dany Boivin
  • animation
    Pierre M. Trudeau
  • compositing
    Pierre M. Trudeau
  • off-line editing
    Sacha Ratcliffe
    Theodore Ushev
  • sound design
    Olivier Calvert
  • original music
    Patrick Bouchard
  • music director
    Philippe Brault
  • musician
    Patrick Bouchard
  • on-camera performer
    Patrick Bouchard
  • foley
    Lise Wedlock
  • foley assistant
    Thomas Garant
  • sound recording
    Geoffrey Mitchell
  • re-recording
    Serge Boivin
  • online editing
    Serge Verreault
  • titles
    Réjean Myette
  • technical direction
    Pierre Plouffe
  • technical coordination, animation
    Yannick Grandmont
  • technical coordination
    Jean-François Laprise
  • production coordination
    Michèle Labelle
  • administration
    Diane Régimbald
    Karine Desmeules
  • administrative assistant
    Diane Ayotte
  • rights clearances
    Sylvia Mezei
  • marketing manager
    Karine Sévigny
    Geneviève Bérard
  • publicist
    Nadine Viau

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